CITY OFFICIALS SELL LEASE ON MOBILE-HOME PARK

Amount the city of Oceanside expects to earn from the sale after paying off bonds

Oceanside city officials have sold the lease on Laguna Vista Mobile Home Estates for $10.7 million to the family that owns the land on which the park is built.

After the city pays off bonds that were issued in 1998, when the city acquired the lease, it expects to earn about $4.5 million from the sale of the lease to the Ishii family, City Manager Peter Weiss said.

More important, the deal — which closed last week — fulfills a City Council push to end city operation of the park while guaranteeing residents that their rents will remain stable, Weiss said. The lease runs through 2052.

“It’s great that we’re out of the mobile-home business,” Councilman Jack Feller said Wednesday. “The Ishiis now own it, and that’s fine with me.”

Mayor Jim Wood said he was in no rush to sell the lease, but is pleased with the outcome.

“As long as it’s been sold to a group that said they’re going to take care of our veterans and seniors, I’m happy in that sense,” Wood said. “It hasn’t been a bad thing owning it as a city.”

Laguna Vista resident Frances Thoene, who represented park residents on the city Mobile Home Park Financing Authority, said she and her neighbors were relieved when the park lease went to owners they know and respect.

“We’re all getting to that age where we’re looking for that security to have a roof over our heads,” Thoene said Thursday. “What more can you want but a roof over your head and food on the table?”

City officials last year had negotiated a deal to sell the park lease to the nonprofit Millennium Housing of Irvine, but the Ishii family said they wanted to buy the lease instead.

The Ishii Family Trust owns the 43.8 acres at 276 El Camino Real on which the park was built in 1978.

The city acquired rights to the park lease after plans fell through for another nonprofit to buy the leasing rights.

Under the terms of the lease, the Ishii family had the right of first refusal, and the family exercised that right when Millennium negotiated to take over the park. The family agreed to take over the lease under the same terms Millennium offered.

That included a guarantee that rents on the 272 park spaces would rise annually by no more than 75 percent of any increase in the regional consumer price index, which measures the cost of goods and services, said city Neighborhood Services Director Margery Pierce.

Oceanside has a mobile-home rent control ordinance in place that has the same provision, but including it in the terms of the Laguna Vista lease ensures that it will remain in place for the park even if the citywide rent control measure is ultimately repealed, Pierce said.

Rents in Laguna Vista are among the highest in the city’s 17 mobile-home parks, averaging between $580 and $650 a month, Pierce said.

Typically, most mobile-home residents own their homes but rent the space on which they’re kept.

As part of the deal, the Ishii family also agreed to keep 150 of the park spaces for low-income renters. Income limits for those spaces would be up to $28,250 for one person and $32,250 for a family of two, Pierce said.